Meet Bishop Eaton

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton was elected as the ELCA’s fourth presiding bishop at the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Born in Cleveland on April 2, 1955, Eaton earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School...

Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther was eight years old when Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and landed in the Western Hemisphere. Luther was a young monk and priest when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome...

ELCA Good Gifts Catalog

Assignment Process

Assignment completes candidacy for all people, including those ordained in another Lutheran church or Christian tradition, moving them toward first call and admittance to the appropriate roster in the ELCA...

Social Issues

Women and girls disproportionately suffer harm worldwide. Some of this harm is intellectual, economic or emotional. A great deal of it is physical and emotional. Through its political advocacy and direct services, the ELCA works with many partners to end the immediate crisis of violence and to respond to people who experience violence. The ELCA also works to address root causes of gender-based violence.

Soon after its formation, the ELCA affirmed in one of its social statements the confession that because we are justified and redeemed by God through Christ, this church is empowered to care for others. Care for the neighbor includes seeking justice in social structures. “[This church] needs constantly to discern when to support and when to confront society’s cultural patterns, values, and powers” (p. 4). The ELCA Justice for Women program serves this purpose by addressing the social system of patriarchy and sexism and the ways it affects all of church and society, sometimes violently. Read the full text of the Church in Society social statement.

Throughout the Justice for Women program resources, you will find resources to help you join the work to respond to crises of violence and to help you dig deeper into social and church “patterns, values and powers” that support violence or interfere with justice for women and girls.

This is Christ's church.

There is a place for you here.
We are the church that shares a living, daring confidence in God's grace. Liberated by our faith, we embrace you as a whole person — questions, complexities and all. Join us as we do God's work in Christ's name for the life of the world.